s
country's service the life that seemed of little use to any one else.
Here, on the coast, where the danger was most real and present, people
drew together in the sympathy of the one great anxiety, and the lonely
man felt as if, in coming back to England, he had really got among
friends, who were all ready to talk and tell the latest news and
discuss the common safety with him as if he were indeed one of
themselves.

He liked the fisher folk, too, in the villages round about, they were
so frank and simple and kindly; and once or twice he had been out in
their boats, for after the hot southern climate he had come from he
felt as if he could not have too much of the fresh salt air. And there
was always excitement, too, in the Channel in those days, when even a
fishing-boat might have to make sail and get away at her best speed
before a French privateer.

When he got back to Plymouth late in the evening after his talk with
Kiah Parker he found every one in a state of great excitement. The
landlady of the lodgings he had taken during his stay there was eager
to tell him the latest news. A frigate had come into the port just at
sundown with a fine prize--a French gun-brig, taken after a stubborn
fight in which both vessels had suffered severely. The first
lieutenant had brought the ship in, the captain being wounded and
disabled, but the whole place was ringing with his praise.

It had been a most brilliant capture, only the greatest daring and most
skilful management could have carried it out.

Two brigs had both attacked the English frigate, and she had made a
feint of flight and then turned on them and managed to sink one and
disable the other. She would have to wait for repairs. So much the
good landlady had told before her lodger could ask a question, and when
she paused for breath he inquired whether she knew the name of the
English ship. Certainly, the _Mermaid_ frigate, Captain Maitland;
heaven send he was not badly hurt, poor gentleman! Had there been any
loss? Not many killed, she thought, a matter of one or two men, and
one officer downed, but a many wounded, they were in hospital; and she
branched off into stories of sailor friends of her own, while her
lodger tried to remember why the name of the ship and the captain were
so familiar to him. It came back to him later in the evening, when he
was reading his paper after a solitary supper. It was a midshipman of
the _Mermaid_ whom he had nursed in